Bring the hostages home. End the war. Surge aid to Gaza.
That was the three-part message of Sunday’s rally at San Francisco Civic Center Plaza that brought out 250 people who brandished signs, waved Israeli flags and listened to speakers call for an immediate end to the 22-month war between Israel and Hamas.
The noon rally was organized by the Israeli expat group UnXeptable and supported by several national Jewish organizations and local synagogues. It was held in solidarity with the weekend’s mass protests and general strike across Israel. The actions in Israel were organized by a group supporting the hostages held in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. Fifty hostages are still held in Gaza, including 20 who are believed to remain alive under dire conditions.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Tel Aviv, Times of Israel reported, with more than a million protesters nationwide on Sunday. Many blocked streets and highways, facing water cannons and arrest, as they protested Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement that Israel intends to expand the war to Gaza City.
“We Israeli Americans, Jewish Americans and allies have gathered here because silence is not neutral,” Offir Gutelzon, co-founder of UnXeptable, a grassroots group that supports Israel but opposes the Netanyahu government, told the rallygoers in San Francisco.
“Endless war is not security,” the Palo Alto resident continued. “Bringing our people home alive is the victory picture we yearn to see. Ensuring that Israelis and Palestinians can live side-by-side with dignity and safety, that is our victory, and that is the only way we can secure a Jewish and democratic Israel.”
Other speakers included state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-S.F.), Rabbi Rena Singer of San Francisco Congregation Emanu-El, Rabbi George Altshuler of S.F. Congregation Sherith Israel, and Noah Rubin, a visiting Israeli scholar at UC Berkeley.
Emanu-El and Sherith were among six Reform synagogues that co-sponsored the rally, along with the Union for Reform Judaism, J Street, New Israel Fund and the D.C.-based New Jewish Narrative — a recent merger of Americans for Peace Now and Ameinu.
Altshuler began by noting that while the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is complicated, that shouldn’t detract from the moral clarity regarding certain actions.
“Some things are incredibly simple,” he told the group, noting that Jewish tradition “compels us to speak out” against immoral acts.
“Starvation as a tool of war is simply wrong. Holding civilian hostages is simply wrong. Opening fire at people desperate for food is simply wrong. The atrocities of Oct. 7 were simply wrong,” he said. “It is time to not be paralyzed by the complexities of this conflict. It is time to say that what is happening in Gaza is simply wrong.”
Gutelzon told J. that Jewish-led demonstrations to free the hostages have been taking place in Israel and the U.S. since the beginning of the war. But, he added, those protests only began adding a demand for an end to the war itself after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages last August, including former Berkeley resident Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Gutelzon said Hamas “made it clear that military pressure won’t bring [the rest] home.”
The Israeli government’s decision earlier this month to escalate the war and take over Gaza City was, Gutelzon said, the impetus behind Sunday’s protests in Israel — and the solidarity rallies in the United States, which also took place in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
“The hostage families are so desperate,” he said.
Terry Becker, 82, an Oakland resident who converted to Judaism 20 years ago, said she decided to attend the S.F. rally because “as a convert” she feels “betrayed” by Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“It’s against everything I understood Judaism to be about,” she said. “For people who have experienced the Holocaust to do that to other people — I don’t have the words.”
Shir Diner, 21, a UC Irvine student from Palo Alto, said she came to the rally to support all three of its stated aims.
“We have an important voice as Jews in the diaspora to amplify the voices in Israel, especially those of the hostage families,” Diner said.
Noting that the struggle to end the war and free the hostages is tied for her to opposition to the Netanyahu government, she said, “This government has been in power since before I was born. My family has been protesting [Netanyahu] my entire life.”
Yonkel Goldstein of San Carlos was one of many attendees holding a poster with faces of hostages. They are why he was at the rally, but not the only reason.
“I’m 76, and when I grew up there was the Six-Day War, Entebbe, all these things you could be proud of Israel for,” he told J.
Goldstein has two grandchildren, ages 8 and 4½. He said the older child is already coming home with questions about what is going on in Gaza.
“I desperately want them, when they come of age, to feel the same pride in Israel I have felt,” he said.
Several people at the rally said they know Jews who had declined to attend, or left early, because they did not feel comfortable standing next to Israeli flags, concerned that it would be seen as support for Israeli government policies.
That showed a misunderstanding of the rally’s purpose, Diner said.
“There are very clear signs here that say, ‘I am Israeli and I am not my government,’” she said, pointing to one attendee holding such a sign.
Despite organizers’ intentions, however, some attendees felt the Israeli flags sent a confusing message.
Judy Levin of Oakland told J. that she knew of people who left the rally, so she spoke to one of the Israeli-born organizers to voice her concern. The organizer told her that the flags were important to show the local media that there are Zionist Jews who oppose the war and Netanyahu’s government.
“I’m not sure that’s the message passers-by are getting,” Levin said.
Levin’s friend Laurie Grossman, also of Oakland, said the Israeli flags were precisely why she did attend the rally.
“That’s why I came,” she said. “I feel that many people who are anti-Israel don’t know the history of Gaza. It’s so complicated.”